The 2013 Razer Blade was a great gaming system with a not so great display. For 2014, Razer outfitted the Blade with a Sharp IGZO 3200x1800 display, as well as a faster GPU. The GeForce GTX 870M was a pretty potent graphics card, and the improved display made the Blade one of the best Windows laptops around. But it was not without its faults. For a laptop that was over $2000, it came with just 8 GB of system memory, and although the GTX 870M was a powerful GPU for last year, it would struggle with framerates at the native resolution of the laptop. So for 2015, Razer is back with another updated version of the Razer Blade, hoping to rectify the remaining nits that we like to pick.

The first major upgrade is the GPU. The 2014 Razer Blade was outfitted with the Kepler based GK104 870M. With one SMX disabled, the 870M came in with 1344 cores. But in October 2014, NVIDIA released their new Maxwell 2.0 based GM204 chips, and they showed not only a performance boost, but much better performance per watt. In a desktop that equates into smaller, less expensive cooling solutions, but in mobile, the lower power draw of the new parts is even more important in unlocking performance. Laptops have been getting smaller and smaller, making it harder to keep a power hungry GPU cool. For the 2015 Razer Blade, the new GTX 970M is now pushing pixels, which should give a nice jump in performance as well as keep the temperatures in check while gaming.

The next upgrade is the CPU. For 2013 and 2014, Razer outfitted the Blade with a quad-core Intel Core i7-4702HQ. This was a 37 watt Haswell CPU, with a 2.2 GHz base and 3.2 GHz turbo frequency. It offered good performance for day to day tasks on the Blade. However, for 2015, there is a substantial upgrade here as well. Although Razer has not said, it is likely that the decreased power draw of the 970M GPU allowed for more of the system TDP to be allocated to the CPU, so the new Blade comes with the Intel Core i7-4720HQ CPU, which is a 47 watt part. The increased TDP allows higher clock speeds, with 2.6 GHz as the base and 3.6 GHz as the turbo, and the ability to keep more cores at a higher frequency under load. It also allows for a higher boost frequency for the integrated HD 4600 GPU.

The last major upgrade is system memory, which is now 16 GB of DDR3L-1600 on the 3200x1800 version of the Blade. Here it is important to specify the model, because for 2015, Razer has introduced a different version of the Blade as well. They are now offering a 1080p version of the Blade, which will come with an anti-glare IPS display, a 256 GB SSD, and only 8 GB of system memory. With the 970M and updated CPU, this model should be plenty fast to run games at native resolution, and the lower resolution panel should help with battery life as well. We will try to get one in to test it against its 3200x1800 IGZO outfitted brother.

Razer Blade 14-Inch Specifications
	2014 (Last Model)		2015 (New Model)
Processor	Intel Core i7-4702HQ (4x2.2GHz + HTT, Turbo to 3.2GHz, 22nm, 6MB L3, 37W)		Intel Core i7-4720HQ (4x2.6GHz + HTT, Turbo to 3.6GHz, 22nm, 6MB L3, 47W)
Chipset	Intel HM87		Intel HM87
Memory	8GB DDR3L-1600		16GB DDR3L-1600
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 3GB GDDR5 1344 CUDA cores, 941 MHz core 5 GHz memory clocks 192-bit memory bus Intel HD 4600 Graphics (20 EUs, up to 1.15GHz)		NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB GDDR5 1280 CUDA cores, 924 MHz + Boost 5 GHz memory clocks 192-bit memory bus Intel HD 4600 Graphics (20 EUs, up to 1.20GHz)
Display	14" Glossy 16:9 3200x1800 Sharp LQ140Z1JW01 IGZO Multitouch with LED Backlight Optional Anti-Glare Matte 16:9 1920x1080 LED Backlight non-touch
Hard Drive(s)	128/256/512GB SATA M.2 256GB Only on 1080p model
Optical Drive	N/A
Networking	Intel Wireless-AC 7260HMW Dual Band 2x2:2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Bluetooth 4.0
Audio	Realtek ALC269 HD audio Stereo speakers Combination mic/headphone jack
Battery	150 watt power adapter 70Wh Lithium-Ion Polymer
Front Side	-
Right Side	USB 3.0 HDMI 1.4a Kensington Lock
Left Side	AC adapter 2x USB 3.0 Combination mic/headphone jack
Back Side	-
Operating System	Windows 8.1 64-bit
Dimensions	13.6" x 9.3 " x 0.70" 345mm x 235mm x 17.8mm
Weight	QHD+ Model: 4.47 lbs 2.03 kg 1080p Model: 4.19 lbs 1.9 kg
Extras	2.0 MP Webcam Razer Synapse 2.0 Software 10-point Multitouch Display on QHD+ Model Backlit anti-ghosting keyboard
Warranty	1 year limited
Pricing	$2199.99 for 128GB QHD+ Model $2399.99 for 256GB QHD+ Model $2699.99 for 512GB QHD+ Model $1999.99 for 256 GB 1080p Model

That constitutes the majority of the changes over last year. One other minor change that is worth mentioning here is that the Samsung PM851 SSD has been replaced with the LiteOn L9G, but those hoping for a PCI-E based SSD in the Razer Blade for this year will be disappointed. This is still a SATA based model in M.2 form factor. LiteOn specifies the L9G model to have 520 MB/s sequential reads on all versions, and 310 MB/s sequential write speeds on the 128 GB model, and 440 MB/s sequential writes on the 256 GB and 512 GB models, and 85K read IOPS and 75K write IOPS at 4K random workloads. There has not been a degradation in performance with this year’s model, and it even nudges past the PM851 on our PCMark Storage benchmark. We reached out to Razer to inquire about the SSD change, and was informed that they source from several manufacturers, so the PM851 in last year’s model was possibly luck of the draw.

Design and Chassis

Internally, Razer outfitted the new Blade with a new CPU, GPU, and more system memory. But the chassis of the 2015 Blade has not changed at all. That is not really a bad thing though, since the Razer Blade already carried with it a fantastic CNC aluminum body. Comparisons are often made with the Retina MacBook Pro, and for good reason. Both are solid computers made of nicely crafted aluminum, and the overall dimensions of the Razer Blade are very similar to the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro.

Also identical to the 2014 Blade is the matte black finish of the anodized aluminum, which feels great and resists fingerprints. The accents are all in “Razer Green” which is consistent across their product line. The USB accents, the keyboard backlighting, the power LED, and the Razer symbol on the back of the LCD are all represented in this shade.

The body of the Razer Blade is very strong, with no flexing or creaking to be had. The top of the lid keeps the two ridges running down the length of the display, which give a nice effect and likely increase rigidity.

The cooling system is also similar. Underneath the Razer Blade, there are two air intakes, which cool the CPU and GPU and push the heated air out into a vent between the display and the back of the laptop. This keeps the vent hidden from view, and makes for a great looking laptop, although the hot air can heat up the top part of the keyboard when the laptop is being worked hard.

We will see how well the cooling system handles the changes later in the review. It now has an additional ten watts of power to dissipate from the new CPU, and an even more powerful GPU, albeit one that is more power efficient as well.

The keyboard is also unchanged, and while it is a great keyboard, with good key travel, and nice feel, this is one area where Razer may have a chance to allow more customization. The “Razer Green” is adjustable as far as intensity, but it would be great to allow more user customization like the Razer Chroma keyboard, or at least color adjustability by the end user.

The trackpad on the Razer Blade is very large, and incredibly smooth. This is not a clickpad, and keeps the dedicated left and right click buttons under the trackpad. This is a layout that I prefer, but this is a preference and others may prefer the added real estate that a clickpad affords them. Regardless, it is a great trackpad. The smooth surface is very easy to move around on, and there were no issues that I found with two finger scrolling or other gestures.

Beside the keyboard is the front facing stereo speakers, and the sides of the device carry the three USB 3.0 ports, the 3.5 mm headset jack, HDMI 1.4 port, and the Kensington lock. An SD card slot would be nice, but is still lacking on the 2015 model. Those hoping for HDMI 2.0 are out of luck. In order to enable NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching, the output actually comes from the integrated GPU. Since Haswell only supports HDMI 1.4, the Razer Blade outputs on the HDMI 1.4b spec which limits the output to 3840x2160 at 30 Hz. Razer has told me that their data shows that more people prefer HDMI at this time, so they are sticking with this over DisplayPort for the external monitor connection.

Razer latops continue the elegant look of the black anodized aluminum, with no garish extras. Though it would be nice to allow for more user customization, it is difficult to fault Razer when they have been so consistent in their styling. The green perfectly matches their other products such as mice and headsets. Though they made no changes to the design of the laptop for 2015, there was little need to, since it was already very high quality, and with great components.

System Performance

The upgraded CPU in the 2015 Blade has made a big improvement in processing power. The outgoing model was no slouch, but 400 MHz of both base and boost clocks, and ten more watts of TDP available, the Core i7-4720HQ performs very well. Some may be wondering where the new Intel Broadwell CPUs are, since they have been available since last year. The launch of Broadwell has been very staggered, with the Core M launch at the end of 2014, which are 4.5 watt CPUs, and then the 15 watt dual-core Broadwell U series was launched at CES in January 2015. The higher wattage quad-core parts on the new 14 nm process will not be out for a few months yet. Razer could have stuck with the old 4702HQ model until then, so it was nice to see them offer a speed bump to the 4720HQ at the same price as last year’s model.

So with the speed increase, let us see how the new model performs compared to last year’s model and some other similar notebooks. If you would like to compare the 2015 Razer Blade to any other laptops we have tested, please check out our online comparison tool, Bench.

The new CPU and SSD combination make a good improvement here over the 2014 model. All of the system benchmarks have gone up quite a bit with the increase in CPU speed. The 2014 model was good, and the 2015 model is better. The move to a 47 watt CPU has improved all aspects of the Blade. The LiteOn SSD also squeaks past the Samsung model which was in our review unit last year.

Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi card in the 2015 Blade carries over from last year. This laptop features the Intel Wireless AC-7260 wireless adapter, which is a 2x2:2 card offering a maximum connection speed of 866 Mbps on 802.11ac.

While the card is the same, there have been a couple of driver updates since our last look at the Razer Blade, so the new model scores slightly higher. Wi-Fi performance is good, assuming you have invested in an 802.11ac router. In addition, the Intel card also does double duty as the Bluetooth adapter.

Gaming Performance

The move to the GTX 970M should bring a substantial increase in graphics performance. Although the 2014 Blade was powerful, the GTX 870M could struggle if gaming at the native resolution of the panel. We will compare it against last year’s model at that resolution, as well as against other laptops in our standard gaming benchmarks.

We will start with our synthetic tests, and then move on to the game benchmarks.

On the 3DMark tests, Fire Strike is the most potent. Here we see a 53% jump in performance over the 2014 Blade with 870M. We ran Cloud Gate several times, and could not get a better score. It is difficult to explain what is going on with that particular benchmark as it seems to be an outlier.

As you can see, the new CPU and GPU combination bumps up the performance quite substantially, with some of our real world benchmarks around 50% faster on the 2015 Blade. This is a good step over last year’s model in all of the tests. But, one area where the 2014 Blade could struggle was high resolution gaming. When you buy a laptop with a 3200x1800 display, you tend to want to take advantage of that if possible. We showed with last year’s model, that using the GeForce Experience menu, you could pretty easily achieve a balance of speed and features that would allow for gaming.

3200x1800 Gaming Testing

GeForce Experience on last year’s Blade gave us the following settings for Tomb Raider at 3200x1800.

This let us achieve a frame rate of 38.4 frames per second in the built in benchmark for Tomb Raider on last year's model. Certainly playable, especially in this genre of game, but not the 60+ FPS preferred for smoother gameplay. GeForce Experience does allow you to customize the framerate for performance versus quality, and we stuck with the default for 3200x1800.

Going through the GeForce Experience for the 2015 Blade actually resulted in a lower framerate. Our benchmark this year with the default 3200x1800 GFE was actually only 33.8 frames per second. However, due to the extra graphics power available, Post Processing was enabled by default for this year. Disabling Post Processing to get to the same settings as the 2014 Blade used resulted in just over 50 frames per second. Almost six million pixels is a lot of pixels to process, even for the latest single GPU mobile parts. However, if 50 frames per second is still not enough, you can easily adjust the slider towards performance and try again.

Really, to take this laptop to the next level for gaming, G-Sync would be a perfect fit since the GPU is plenty powerful, but could use a bigger safety net when the framerates do dip. This is not something we have seen officially on any laptops yet, but with the desktop monitors trickling out, it will only be a matter of time before it ends up in a laptop as well.

As a gaming laptop, this section is likely the most important to prospective buyers. The new CPU and GPU combo both add quite a bit more punch to the Razer Blade, and make for a better gaming experience at the high resolution of this display.

Display

The 2013 Razer Blade had a 1600x900 TN panel, and for 2014 Razer replaced it with a Sharp IGZO 3200x1800 LCD. At 262 pixels per inch, it was one of the higher DPI panels on any laptop last year. While High DPI in the Windows world is not perfect, it has gotten a lot better over the last year. In my experience, the benefits of High DPI outweigh the drawbacks. Major vendors like Adobe have released High DPI aware versions of their software suites, and even Google Chrome has made good progress with High DPI support in Windows this year. The situation is still not perfect, but we are getting better. Steam used to have issues, but they have all been resolved, however Origin does not scale at all. Still, the display in the 2014 Razer Blade was one of its stand out features.

For 2015, Razer has kept the exact same display, which is not a bad thing at all. The 2014 Razer Blade had one of the more accurate displays out of the box, with decent brightness and great contrast. As this is a Sharp IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) thin film transistor (TFT) based LCD, the thinner TFT allows more light to pass through, and keeps the power requirements of the backlight down. Some panels go with a Red Green Blue White pixel arrangement, with the white pixel just there to increase brightness. Sharp’s IGZO panels keep with the standard RGB stripe, allowing the possibility for a more accurate panel.

Razer includes a default color profile for the display as well. Blade.icm pulls the calibration in a lot closer than the standard panel would be. Just because it is IGZO (possibly AHVA but certainly not TN) does not mean it is going to be accurate, so it is good to see the default color profile included as most people do not have any equipment to calibrate the monitor themselves. All of our uncalibrated tests were run with the Blade.icm as the default profile for Windows.

To calibrate our displays, we use SpectralCal’s CalMAN 5 software suite with a custom workflow. An X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter is used for brightness and contrast measurements, and an X-Rite i1Pro Spectrophotometer is used for color accuracy tests. We calibrate all displays to the sRGB standard, and to 200 nits brightness.

Uncalibrated with default Blade.icm profile

Razer rates the Blade at 350 nits, and it fell a bit short of that mark. This year’s model that was received could achieve 320 nits. Contrast ratio was still very good though with excellent black levels.

Here we can start to see that our 2015 sample was not as dialed in, with a blue shift happening at the higher end of the grayscale sweep, pulling the grayscale up to 5.1. White point is a bit blue as well at 7121.

Saturations are also a bit higher in this year’s model, with a jump to just over three. Three is still a good value though.

GMB drops compared to the 2014 model, but still comes in at a very respectable 2.58. We would like values under three if possible, and the review unit delivers.

So out of the box, with the Razer color profile, the review unit in hand today does not quite live up to the lofty results from the 2014 model. It still comes in with a good solid result, but does not top the charts for this year.

However, we can also calibrate it to see if we can improve it. Since the main issue was the grayscale being off, this is something that can be corrected through calibration.

Calibrated – 200 nits

Now we can see that the 2015 panel is just as good as the 2014 panel (which is not a huge surprise since it is the same specification) and the grayscale falls to just 0.7, and the improvements in gamut, saturation, and GMB with the new icc file bring those values in around 1.0 to 1.5. Just like last year, the blue value still overshoots, but the result is a fantastic.

One thing that we do not normally mention in our laptop reviews is minimum brightness, because normally, it is very low. As an example, the Yoga 2 Pro goes all the way down to under 3 nits. That is a bit excessive, but the HP Stream minimum brightness is 16 nits, and the Dell Latitude E5250 was 15 nits. Somewhere around 15-20 nits is good, and lets you use the laptop in a dark room very easily.

The Razer Blade has a minimum brightness of 90 nits. This is far too high for a minimum brightness, and makes it a chore to use in a dark room. Hopefully Razer can release a BIOS upgrade with new settings and allow this to go lower.

Battery Life

The Razer keeps the same 70 Wh battery capacity as last year, but has a 47 watt CPU now instead of a 37 watt CPU. For our battery tests, Optimus should keep the GTX 970 turned off, so it should not affect our scores. Razer saw a regression in battery life last year when they moved to the High DPI display, and we do not want to see this again.

Razer is also shipping a new 1080p non touch model this year. With the lower screen density, and fewer pixels to drive by the integrated GPU, battery life for that model should be above and beyond what we see here, but we will not know for sure unless we can get one to test. We have reached out to Razer for a sample, and will provide the results if we are able to get one.

For consistent results, we calibrate the display to 200 nits. On the model was received, this was 45% brightness. We then perform a series of tests multiple times and record how long the device lasts before shutting down. Laptops are configured to use the Power Saving mode in the power options to maximise battery life. Our first test is our light test, which consists of light web browsing.

Luckily the higher wattage CPU did not cause a battery life hit under light loads. In fact, this year we were able to squeeze an extra twenty minutes out of the Blade than last year. It is still short of the 2013 model, which only had a 1600x900 display, and well back of the 95 Wh equipped Retina MacBook Pro and 91 Wh Dell XPS 15. High DPI has its price, and battery life is it.

Next we ramp up the workload, with a movie, heavier web browsing, and a 1 Mbps file download happening concurrently.

Our heavy test saw a nice jump in battery life with this test, coming in about 30 minutes higher than last year. It is a good result, coming in very close to the 2013 Blade, as well as the rMPB and XPS 15, both of which have much larger batteries.

Normalizing the graphs removes the battery capacity from the scores, and lets us take a look at each platform’s overall efficiency. The 2015 model jumps up nicely over the 2014 model. The high resolution display is a big draw, but Razer has done a nice job reducing its impact on the overall battery life.

Gaming Battery Life – NVIDIA Battery Boost

NVIDIA has settings to allow games to be auto configured to run with different settings depending on whether you are plugged in, or running off battery power. The goal is to allow for a longer gaming experience when mobile. Our results have been mixed on it so far, and a lot of it comes down to the individual game in question. Battery Boost caps the frame rate, allowing the GPU to draw less power. In practice, there are a lot of factors involved which come into play. If you are playing a demanding game that is already close to the framerate cap, Battery Boost is not going to be able to make a huge difference anyway.

The difference is not huge with this game at the default GeForce Experience settings. Playing a less demanding game could show bigger gains here, but in my experience, keep the power cord handy if you are gaming. A high power CPU and GPU just will not lead to good battery life if they are being stressed.

Temperatures

The Razer Blade gets hot. The first one got hot, the second one got hot, and this one gets hot. There is a quite powerful CPU and GPU sitting under the keyboard, and they can both generate lots of heat when being pushed to their maximum. The air intakes are on the bottom, and exhaust out the vent between the back of the laptop and the display, so the hottest part is the center near the hinge. At the same ambient of 21°C, temperatures were not quite as high as we saw last year, but still very toasty at over 50°C at the power button.

Razer Blade Temperatures after one hour of 3200x1800 gaming (Tomb Raider)

The graphic shows the hot spots on this laptop. Top center is the hottest, but the rest of the laptop is warm, but usable. There is a lot of heat to be moved out of this chassis.

To test and see if the GPU throttles under prolonged use, we checked it running the Tomb Raider benchmark for a couple of hours.

As you can see, the GPU load is completely flat, and the GPU core clock does not move at all over the duration. The only change was in the GPU temperature, which would rise up, causing the fans to increase in speed, and then it would fall down again and repeat.

Noise

Razer has tuned the fans to stay as quiet as possible. The laptop is almost dead silent under most light workloads, and then as you begin gaming, the speed will ramp up. Depending on the gaming load, fan speeds may increase for a bit, but they always seem to want to get down to the lowest speed possible to keep system noise down.

When the fans are running though, the laptop is very loud. We measured 55.0 dBA at 1 inch from the system after one hour of gaming. It is very loud, and very noticeable. In my opinion, any gaming on the Razer Blade would necessitate headphones unless the sound of fan noise does not bother you. There is a lot of heat generated inside the small chassis, and the fans have to expel that.

Speakers

The Razer has two front facing stereo speakers. With laptops this thin, there generally is not a lot of room for good sounding speakers, but I am ready to be surprised at any time. As for overall volume, the new Razer Blade comes in at 83 dBA. The 2014 Razer Blade did not impress me with its speaker quaility, which was disappointing due to not only the cost of the device, but the front facing speakers, which should have an advantage over any system which fires the speakers down, were very poor. With laptops getting as thin and small as they are now, forward facing speakers are less common, so I was looking for more on the 2014 model.

The frequency response for the 2015 Razer Blade is very much improved over the last model. The 2014 model had a very poor curve, and almost no sound at all under 200 Hz. As soon as the first frequency was tested it was obvious that some changes have been made to the speakers. I reached out to Razer, and asked them about the speakers. Although the actual speakers are the same, various subsystems have been changed. Some tuning has certainly been done to improve the overall sound quality, and it has made a big difference. When gaming, headphones will still be necessary to get rid of the fan noise, but for watching movies or listening to music, the speakers are much more usable now.

Software

The only software installed on the system, is Razer’s Synapse software. This in and of itself is worth mentioning due to the huge amount of extra software normally installed on new PCs. On a premium device such as this, it is nice to see that there are no bundled extras to increase Razer's margins. The Synapse software is their in-house software to control the Blade and other Razer peripherals. Razer Synapse has continued to evolve since we last took a look at it. We will not go over what has not changed, so if you want to check that out, it is detailed on our last review here. What is new is a new Stats option on the Synapse software. Opening this goes to some interesting software which lets you keep track of what you are doing while gaming.

Stats, once enabled, will keep track of total keystrokes, distance, profile switches, and macro use, to let you know just what it is you are doing in the heat of battle. And speaking of heat, moving over to the Heatmaps section displays some very cool graphics of where your mouse clicks occur on the screen, where you tend to move your mouse to, and what keys you use the most while gaming. Some of us are certainly not good enough gamers to gain any sort of insight with this data, but it is interesting to look at. For those that want the extra edge, it is a nice addition to the software.

This is what is new on the software, but no software is perfect, nor is any hardware. In future versions of the Synapse software, it would be nice to see some extra features that are missing from the Razer Blade.

First, and previously mentioned, is the lack of any sort of customization of the lighting scheme for the Razer Blade. The green is nice, but there are those of us who like to really make it our own. Alienware has done this for years, and Razer now has some nice looking RGB keyboards which offer some great customization and effects.

The other addition to the software is likely more functional. Fan control should be part of the Synapse software suite on laptops. As much as we like how silent the Razer Blade is doing light duty tasks, almost nothing is more annoying to some people than a fan that ramps up and down, rather than just stay constant. A nice addition would be multiple fan settings, which could be automatically enabled when the GPU kicks in. As we saw in the GPU load graph, there was no throttling at all on the GPU, but the temperature would go up and down like a saw blade. Give me an option to just leave the fans on maximum in that scenario.

Final Words

For 2015, we have a new Razer Blade, which on the outside is a dead ringer for last year’s model. We have the same design, the same keyboard, trackpad, strong aluminum body, and fantastic QHD+ display. All of those features were already excellent on the previous model, so Razer stayed conservative and kept all of it the same. Razer builds one of the best looking, most polished, and high quality gaming laptops on the market, so it makes sense not to rock the boat.

For 2015, what we have is more inside. You cannot see it from afar, but once you start using the new Blade, the new power becomes readily apparent. The GTX 970M is a perfect addition to this laptop, and we have seen sometimes up to 50% better performance than the 2014 model. The new card is much better at driving the 3200x1800 display, and with the new 1080p model sharing the same GPU, performance should be excellent.

The GTX 970M is somewhat of an obvious upgrade though. The 2014 model had the 870M, so it only makes sense that the new model would get the replacement for that card. What was a nice surprise for the 2015 model is both the new CPU, and the increased system memory. For the memory, the outgoing model’s 8 GB of RAM was a sore spot for me on a premium priced laptop. The move to 16 GB of DDR3L-1600 should satisfy most users’ needs for quite a while. It is extra important that Razer outfits the laptop with this because the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so user upgrades are out of the question. And just to be clear, the review unit we received, and all of the 3200x1800 models will come with 16 GB of memory, but the 1080p model will be limited to 8 GB. The extra system RAM really opens the Razer Blade up to be more of a general purpose computer, with enough RAM for a couple of virtual machines to be running at any one time, or other memory intensive software.

The CPU is a very big boost as well, which could easily be overshadowed by the new graphics card. The move the 47 watt CPU gives a sharp boost in performance for all tasks, and the cooling system does not seem to be strained at all with the extra heat. With four cores at 2.6 GHz, hyperthreading, and boost clocks of 3.6 GHz, the CPU is quite a big upgrade. Once again, this opens the door to more non-gaming workloads for this device, which should increase its appeal.

Razer has added all of these internal upgrades, but one more thing that was not changed was the price. With a faster CPU, more RAM, and an upgraded GPU, the 2015 Razer Blade comes in at exactly the same price as last year’s model. Yes, they still offer the silly 128 GB SSD version, which you should really avoid if you are considering this device and are not comfortable replacing the SSD. Companies like to charge a lot for upgrades, and Razer is no exception, with the 256 GB model being $200 more than the 128 GB model. The 512 GB model is another $300 above that.

The base price of the 1080p model with a 256 GB SSD comes in at just under $2000, and the 1800p versions are priced at $2200 for 128 GB, $2400 for 256 GB, and $2700 for 512 GB. It is a lot of money for a 14” gaming laptop. Luckily the quality of the components really are top notch. For the money, you get a great display, good keyboard, excellent trackpad, and powerful internals wrapped in a thin machined aluminum body. It is a lot of money, but it is also a great experience.